Field
This disclosure is generally related to a transport framework. More specifically, this disclosure is related to an identity management and initialization scheme for a transport stack, and a naming scheme for the stack and its components.
Related Art
The ubiquitous nature of mobile computing devices and the Internet is making it possible for people to experience digital content from anywhere. People can use applications in their mobile computing devices to consume or interact with content from service providers across the Internet, such as to stream movies or music or to play games with others. These advances in mobile computing are also increasing the quality of content that can be reproduced by these mobile devices and greatly increases the number of devices that can generate and capture digital content and share with others over the Internet. Nowadays, even small mobile devices such as smartphones can produce full high-definition video with high-quality color reproduction, and high-speed cellular and broadband networks make it possible for users to share this content with others over various Internet services, such as the YouTube (from Google, Inc.) and Facebook (from Facebook, Inc.) content-sharing services.
Many computer applications leverage these computer networks and Internet services to provide social features to its users, which greatly enhances the user experience. When an application wants to use the network, it does so by using one or more Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that run on the computing device's operating system. These APIs provide a way for applications to send, receive, store, configure data or otherwise communicate with other computers across the network.
For example, an application instantiates a protocol stack that implements a network API before the application can use the API to send or receive data over the network. In a traditional protocol stack based on, e.g., the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model, each layer can only communicate with the layer above or below it. In a model based on a content-centric network (CCN), a protocol stack can be dynamically created to suit the needs of APIs used by various applications. While the creation of these application-driven protocol stacks can increase the flexibility of a system, the lack of standardization presents challenges in addressing specific components within such a stack.